Lanre Bakare

I spoke with their lawyer, Howard King, who represents them, and told me all about how they allege a decade of sustained abuse.

They allege child trafficking, they allege assault, and they allege grooming in...

A level of detail which is really shocking and harrowing to read, to review those reports.

That case will likely be going to trial next year.

But in the meantime, the estate would very much like you to focus on the biopic and celebration of his life.

So we have these sort of dueling parallel narratives at the moment.

So I think that's true, and I think there is a protective instinct, especially from a lot of black cultural critics, to protect black artists because of the way that black people in general have been treated historically, especially in America.

But I think with Michael Jackson, there's something else going on.

And it's his biography, it's his story, right?

So he emerges as a five-year-old who's pushed to the front of this group by his father, Joe Jackson, who's a failed musician himself.

from Gary, Indiana, this kind of place in the, basically the middle of nowhere, very industrial.

And Joe Jackson's this kind of like centrifugal force in the middle of the family, which drives his children to become these, these child stars.

He basically wills them into the Motown office with Diana Ross.

They do an audition and they're successful and their career takes off.

They go into this incredible machine and off they go.

You know, Michael Jackson doesn't have a childhood.

We know that there's accusations of him being sexually assaulted by people within the music industry.

There's a few allegations of that flying around.

Well, yeah, he would whip them.

I was reading a thing the other day, Michael Jackson saying he would like apply oil to them so that he could get more kind of purchase on this kind of physical assault that he was putting his children through.